Articles
Reverse Pyramid Training Guide
Reverse Pyramid Training is a popular way for intermediates to break through muscle and strength plateaus. It’s also quite efficient, typically involving three full-body workouts per week, each lasting less than an hour.
In this article, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of Reverse Pyramid Training, why you might want to train this way, how to do it, and then give a sample workout program. We’ll also cover whether it’s a good way of stimulating muscle growth compared to other training methods, such as traditional hypertrophy training.
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A Review of Starting Strength for Building Muscle
Starting Strength was created by the former powerlifter Mark Rippetoe as a beginner program for gaining general strength. It has its roots in powerlifting culture, but it’s not a powerlifting program. It’s designed to be good for gaining general strength, but what does that mean? And it’s occasionally marketed as being a good program for gaining muscle size. Is it?
What we want to do in this article is to review it from the perspective of a skinny person who’s new to lifting weights and trying to gain muscle mass, become stronger, and improve their appearance. Is Starting Strength ideal for those very specific goals?
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Review of the Max Size Workout Program by Athlean-X
Our specialty is hypertrophy training. More specifically, we help naturally skinny “hardgainers” bulk up. But before that, Marco worked as the strength coach for several college, professional, and Olympic athletes. He also interned under Eric Cressey, the strength coach overseeing the training of the Yankees. So we’ve got somewhat similar roots to Jeff Cavaliere. Not surprisingly, then, we get a lot of questions about his muscle-building program for skinny guys.
Max Size is Jeff Cavaliere’s workout program for hardgainers looking to build muscle. That’s the program that best lines up with our area of expertise. So let’s evaluate it based purely on how effective it is at helping skinny guys bulk up.
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Is Olympic Weightlifting Good for Gaining Muscle Size?
Is Olympic weightlifting good for building muscle? It depends on what we compare it against. Any type of training that challenges our muscles with heavy loads has the potential to stimulate at least a little bit of muscle growth. That makes it quite a bit better than endurance training and cardio for building muscle. But does Olympic weightlifting stimulate a comparable amount of muscle growth to hypertrophy training (aka bodybuilding)?
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Is German Volume Training (10×10) Good for Gaining Muscle Size?
German volume training (GVT), also knows as the ten sets method, is commonly used during bulking phases as a way to increase muscle growth. But how does it compare against a more traditional bulking approach? Do those extra sets really stimulate extra muscle growth?
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Are 3-Day Push/Pull/Legs Workout Splits Good for Building Muscle?
Push/Pull/Legs Workout Splits have been a popular way of building muscle for several decades. The 6-day version is beloved by many serious bodybuilders, while the 3-day version is more popular with casual lifters. That’s the version I want to talk about here.
The idea is to hammer a muscle with a variety of exercises, stimulate a maximal amount of muscle growth, and then give the muscle a full week to recover before training it again. Is that the best way to build muscle?
In the past few years, a substantial amount of research has come out comparing push/pull/legs routines against full-body routines. We also have a number of studies looking into how many sets we should do and how often we should train. The findings were surprising.
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How to Gain Strength
What’s the best way to get stronger? We get this question a lot. CrossFit claims to emphasize functional exercises to develop functional strength. Is functional strength a real thing? And does doing functional exercises really improve our general strength?
Strength training sounds like it would be designed to develop general strength, and it certainly can be. However, it’s usually rooted in powerlifting, which is a more specific type of strength. Strength is more than just how much you can squat, bench, and deadlift for a single repetition.
Next, callisthenics offers mastery over our body weight. If someone is good at push-ups, chin-ups, and planches, they must be strong overall, right? Not necessarily. We also need to be good at lifting and carrying things.
Finally, bodybuilders train to build bigger muscles. They train to look strong, and they are. But they can’t squat as much as powerlifters or do as many chin-ups as callisthenics athletes. Why is that? Are their muscles big but weak?
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The Hypertrophy Rep Range: How Many Reps to Build Muscle?
How many reps should you do to gain muscle mass? In strength training, doing five reps per set is a popular way to gain mass. In bodybuilding, though, where the goal is to build bigger muscles as fast as possible, most people do sets of 8–12 reps. Which rep range stimulates more muscle growth?
Should we use different rep ranges for different lifts? If doing 5-rep sets on the bench press hurts our shoulders, should we use a higher rep range? If doing 12-rep sets of squats challenges our fitness more than our strength, should we use a lower rep range? And what about compound versus isolation lifts? Should we use lower reps for our compound lifts and higher reps for our isolation lifts?
Finally, what if we want to use a rep range that helps us gain both muscle size and strength? Does that mean we should use a mix of lower and moderate reps? For instance, lifting from 3 reps all the way up to 20 reps per set? Or is it better to use a rep range that’s halfway between strength training and hypertrophy training? For instance, doing 4–6 reps per set?
So, is there a hypertrophy rep range? And if so, what is it?
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The Most Popular Forms of Exercise (According to Google)
What type of exercise is the most popular? Then, when it comes to lifting weights, which type of weight training is the most popular? Is bodybuilding more popular than CrossFit? Is CrossFit more popular than powerlifting?
Another thing I was curious about is whether more people were interested in training at home or at the gym. And for people training at home, are they more interested in using a barbell, dumbbells, resistance bands, or doing calisthenics?
To answer all of these questions, we can look at Google Trends to see what information people are looking for online.
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The Most Popular Fitness Goals (According to Google)
In this article, let’s look at what fitness terms and goals people are searching for. Are people trying to lose fat or build muscle? When they’re trying to build muscle, are they more interested in gaining size or strength? When they’re trying to gain muscle size, which muscles are they most eager to bulk up?
To answer all of these questions, we can look at Google Trends to see what information people are looking for online.
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